In Russia, Candidates on View

President Boris N. Yeltsin huddled with top advisors Wednesday amid Russia’s continuing political gridlock, as potential candidates for prime minister visited his estate and the Kremlin and popped up on television.

For the second straight day since his nominee for prime minister was rejected by parliament, Yeltsin remained out of public view and gave no hint of whom he will name to head the government or how he proposes to end Russia’s crippling economic crisis.

Yeltsin’s critics welcomed his hesitation as a sign that he might offer a new candidate rather than renominate former Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, who has twice been rejected by the Duma, the lower house of parliament.

“It is a very positive moment,” said Oleg Morozov, leader of the Duma’s moderate Russia’s Regions faction. “Everyone understands that there is a chance to agree.”

Secluded at his country estate outside Moscow, Yeltsin met with Chernomyrdin and Foreign Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov, one of the officials suggested as a compromise candidate. Two other potential nominees, Moscow Mayor Yuri M. Luzhkov and Gov. Yegor S. Stroyev, chairman of the upper house of parliament, met separately with a top Yeltsin aide at the Kremlin.

It was unclear whether Yeltsin was attempting to build support for nominating Chernomyrdin a third time or was searching for a compromise candidate who could pacify Russia’s battling political factions.

Under the Russian Constitution, Yeltsin has three chances to nominate a prime minister. If the Duma refuses for a third time to confirm his choice--no matter whom Yeltsin names this time--the president must dissolve the lower house and call new elections.

The stakes are high for both sides. If Yeltsin dissolves the Duma, he can name whomever he wants to be prime minister and rule by decree for as long as four months. But if the Communist-dominated Duma refuses to disband, it could inspire a popular rebellion against the president and spark the civil war that some Communists have predicted will come.

The high-level political maneuvering came as the nation’s currency showed its first sign of improvement in weeks, jumping in value from 20.8 rubles to the dollar to 15.8 to the dollar. Analysts, however, cautioned that the currency’s higher value may have been prompted by a temporary shortage of rubles at exchange outlets and may not reflect a long-term improvement in its worth.

Under the constitution, which was forced through by Yeltsin in 1993, the president has until Monday to make his final nomination for prime minister. The post is crucial because the prime minister runs the government on a day-to-day basis. If Yeltsin dies or steps down, the prime minister becomes acting president and calls a new election.

Grigory A. Yavlinsky, head of the pro-market Yabloko faction in the Duma, who earlier offered himself as a candidate for prime minister, said Russia’s prospects for economic recovery depend greatly on whom Yeltsin selects.

“Whether the government in Russia will be good or bad depends on the name,” he said in a television interview. “It is better to have no government at all than to have a bad one. . . . It is even worse when you have a bad government that makes catastrophic decisions.”

Yavlinsky, 46, has been a constant thorn in Yeltsin’s side and ran against him for president in 1996. He consistently advocates pro-market solutions and frequently criticizes Russia’s economic system, which is dominated by a handful of politically powerful tycoons.

He maintains that Yeltsin, 67, is debilitated by illness and must pick a successor but is paralyzed by a clash between rival “clans” that control different parts of the economy.

“The political regime has exhausted itself,” Yavlinsky said. “He cannot carry on functioning. This simply means the end of the system that was created by Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin.”

None of the other candidates whose names have been put forward have been willing to express interest in the job.

Yavlinsky suggested that a good compromise candidate would be Primakov, 68, who, as foreign minister, has gained a reputation as a strong defender of Russia’s interests and a skillful negotiator with the West. A former top official of the KGB during Soviet times, he was credited earlier this year with mediating the dispute between Baghdad and Washington over weapons inspections in Iraq.

After he met with Yeltsin on Wednesday, Primakov issued a statement through the Foreign Ministry saying: “I am grateful to those who are proposing my candidacy for the post of chairman of the government. However, let me declare it unambiguously: I cannot consent to this.”

Another widely mentioned candidate is Luzhkov, the aggressive, strong-willed mayor of Moscow. Luzhkov has consistently told reporters that he is not looking for another job. After meeting Wednesday with Chernomyrdin and Yeltsin’s chief of staff, Valentin B. Yumashev, Luzhkov predicted that the president will stick with Chernomyrdin, even if it brings on renewed political upheaval.

Also frequently named as a compromise candidate is Stroyev, 61, governor of the Orel region about 200 miles southwest of Moscow. A doctor of economics, he served as a member of the Communist Party Central Committee and the Politburo during Soviet times. He is now chairman of the Federation Council, the upper house of parliament, which is made up of the nation’s governors and heads of regional legislatures.

On Wednesday, Stroyev likened Yeltsin to former Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who presided over the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 and then was left without a job.

“Everybody is ready to get this nomination over as soon as possible,” Stroyev told reporters.

Apparently left out of the high-level meetings Wednesday was Alexander I. Lebed, 48, governor of the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia. Lebed served as commander of a paratroop battalion in Afghanistan during Soviet times. He ran against Yeltsin in 1996, coming in third, and negotiated a peace accord that ended the war against rebels in the Russian republic of Chechnya. The president fired him soon after, and Lebed has said he would never serve under Yeltsin again.

Arriving in Moscow on Wednesday for a meeting of regional leaders, Lebed told reporters that he was ready to lead the country in the event of an emergency and called on Yeltsin to resign.

The Communists are pushing for the nomination of Yuri D. Maslyukov, 60, who was a member of the party’s Central Committee and the Politburo during the Soviet era.